Today I got a free pickup load of wood chips from a listing on Craig's List. It was a humongous pile and we barely made a dent in it. The guy told us to come back for more if we wanted it. I unloaded it and filled the walkways in the garden. It looks great! I also mulched part of the area around the fishpond (and finally planted one of the dianthus flowers there).

It was Skippy's birthday today....Friday the 13th. How appropriate. He's 37 years old. He's catching up to me. Yesterday I was 9 years older than him. Now I'm only 8. ;o) I got him a book on the history of the Tour de France from 1903-2003. He loves that stuff and can rattle off all sorts of trivial stats on it. I can remember the highlights but really only watched it because of Lance Armstrong.

Had some drama with the neighbour who accused dd of tearing up his garden. She wouldn't. I'm not one of those parents who think that their little Throckmorten can do no wrong. She's capable of doing bad things and lying. This time I think she's covering for the guy's granddaughter who is a spiteful little kindergartener.

Today was also the last day of school. Dd is officially a 3rd grader now. The husband and I were playing a joke on her about her report card, telling her she didn't pass and will be stuck in 2nd again and she burst into tears. "I was really looking forward to going to Winterpock with Ben!" she cried, tears rolling down her sweaty little dirt streaked cheeks. Geez.

I went on a tear today. Mopped the bathroom and kitchen floors. Scratched out some grout. Vacuumed the rug so much it kinda sorta melted a big patch out of it. Seriously. I've had that rug for a long long time and I love it. I can't even turn it to hide the burn. *sigh* I wiped down some of the woodwork. I rearranged the sewing room and can't understand why I didn't arrange it like that a long time ago. It looks so much better and bigger. :scratches head: I washed all the dishes. Dusted. I fried up a mess of cabbage for dinner. I answered my emails. I filled out some paperwork.

I'm really tired.

Or do you make excuses? When was the last time you picked a piece of trash off the ground that wasn't yours? I admit that I've been rather lax about trash pickup in my sub. Let's face it...some of my neighbours are pigs and it's easy to succumb to feelings of futility when I clean up the ditch in front of the same house over and over again. I mean, why bust my ass using a RAKE in order to make my carbon footprint smaller when everyone around me is filling the air with noise pollution and greasy clouds of burning oil from their leaf blowers? Why bust my ass lugging buckets of captured rain water to the garden when the neighbour is "powerwashing" the grassclippings from his front yard during a severe drought? Not a single soul in my subdivision dries their laundry on a clothesline except me. Don't they realize that solar power is free? That sunshine actually kills germs and will make their whites whiter? According to Kim McKay and Jenny Bonnin in their book True Green, an electric clothes dryer generates more than 6.5 pounds of greenhouse gases per load.

I know I'm standing on a soapbox and beating my chest but people have to start making their own micro efforts because big business sure as hell ain't gonna do it until the government forces them. And the government isn't likely to force the issues if those in power are making money while raping Mother Earth.

Please do what you can.

How about 'ugh'. Took the kidlet to a roller skating party today. It's blistering outside. It's got to be about 100. Drop dd off and go to Kohls to return a skirt I got yesterday that was too big. (Yay! I'm losing weight!) Anyway, the place is packed but nice and cool. We return the skirt and once again hit the blistering parking lot. On to Lowes. I like Lowes. I'd go there everyday if I didn't care what people would think. Dh decides to turn the a/c on in the truck. The truck drops to a crawl. Very sluggish. It feels like a shopping cart with a wonky wheel. I hop out to see if we have a flat. Everything looked ok. Dh pulled out onto the main drag and the truck kept jerking to the right. WTF? We pull off the road again and there's smoke pouring out from behind the front right wheel. It smells like burning tires. Dh drives it across the parking lot and it seems ok. We decide to try to get to the Firestone place down the road. We get out into traffic and crack! Something went south. We limped to Ukrops so we could use their phone book. We usually keep one in the car and the truck but dh must have taken it out recently.

Long story short. Our truck was broken down. Dd was still at the skating party. We needed to get the truck towed and get home to our other vehicle all in an hour. There are no cabs down here. No public transportation. The birthday boy's mom called us on the cell but we didn't hear it ringing because the towtruck guy, Jimmy, had country music blasting thru the speakers. Dh tried to call her back but couldn't get thru. Once we got the truck towed I called the skating rink and got a bunch of shit from whoever answered the phone. Finally the boy's mom got on the line and I could barely hear her. She was very nice about all of it. Jimmy was ready to take us home at that point so I told her we'd be there in a few minutes.

We got home with about 15 minutes to spare. Dh picked up the kid and called from the grocery store. There's no telling how much today is going to end up costing us. Probably about $65 for the half mile tow alone. 'ugh'